The circular office reeked of lemon drops left too long in the sun and the faint copper tang of old blood that no Scourgify could ever quite erase. Fawkes watched from his perch with the dull, disinterested stare of something that had seen too many "necessary" deaths. Sean sat in the visitor's chair, legs crossed, floating ledger still open to the Green's Bookshop payroll—thirty-five Galleons for the manager, room and board, the usual. Fifteen for the new hire. Numbers that had once felt like control.
Dumbledore stood behind the desk, half in shadow. The twinkle was gone. What remained was the flat, ancient certainty of a man who had weighed every life on the scales and always found his own thumb the heaviest.
"You have been… efficient," the Headmaster said quietly. "Basilisk dead before the first scream. Hagrid's name cleared before the Ministry could finish their tea. The Chamber reduced to a footnote. Even the Acromantulas—charred to ash before they could scream. All before breakfast, as it were."
Sean closed the ledger with a soft snap. "I was helping."
"You were erasing the story," Dumbledore corrected, voice gentle as a blade sliding between ribs. "Harry must be the one who suffers, who bleeds, who learns. The prophecy demands a hero forged in fire, not handed a finished world by a boy who grinds every threat to dust before the rest of us wake up. You have become… inconvenient."
Sean felt the first cold thread of understanding. Not fear—yet—just the slow, mechanical click of pieces sliding into place. The Veritaserum he'd planned to take tonight. The way Dumbledore had always known exactly where he was. The subtle nudges that kept him away from certain truths until the moment they no longer mattered.
He reached for his wand.
Dumbledore was faster.
Not with magic. With a matte-black Muggle revolver lifted from the drawer like it had always been waiting there.
Click.
The safety.
"I studied your… panel," Dumbledore murmured. "Belief. That is your core now. Belief shields you from spells, from curses, from the Dark Arts you flirted with so casually. But belief cannot stop what your mind refuses to acknowledge. A simple lead slug. No incantation. No wand. Just physics. The one subject you never bothered to allocate points to."
Sean's eyes widened—just a fraction. The first crack in the perfect mask he had worn since the orphanage.
"Headmaster—"
Bang.
The first shot took him in the stomach. Not instant. Not clean. Hot, tearing pain that folded him forward like a broken puppet. The ledger fluttered to the floor, pages spattered red.
Bang.
The second punched through his chest, collapsing a lung. Air whistled out wetly. Sean tried to speak—tried to summon the belief that had once turned fire into an ocean, that had made a basilisk kneel—but the belief was fracturing, poisoned by the simple, stupid truth: he was dying to a weapon a first-year Muggle could buy in a shop.
Blood bubbled on his lips. "All this… for a story?"
Dumbledore's face was carved from stone. "For the world that must survive Voldemort's return. One boy's pain is a small price. Yours… regrettable. But necessary."
Bang.
The third shot was mercy, if mercy existed in that room. Sean's body jerked, slid sideways, and slumped half out of the chair. His eyes—still open—stared at the ceiling where the phoenix's light reflected like distant, indifferent stars.
In the spreading pool of blood, the floating parchment of his system panel flickered one last time:
[You have died.
Skill: "Invincible Belief" has been forcibly reset.
Respawn denied—narrative integrity maintained.
Final message from the architect: "No one told me Hogwarts was hiding a White Dark Lord."
—Tom Riddle (deceased)]
The panel dissolved into static.
Down in the Great Hall the Halloween feast continued. Justin laughed at something Ron said, then paused, a sudden chill crawling up his spine. He looked toward the doors, waiting for the small, quiet figure who never missed dinner.
He would wait a long time.
In the morning the house-elves would find the office spotless. No blood. No ledger. Just Albus Dumbledore sipping tea, eyes once more twinkling with gentle wisdom, telling Harry that Sean had been called away on urgent family business and would not be returning this year.
Or ever.
The Greater Good, after all, always required its quiet sacrifices.
And in the end, even the boy who grinded the universe to his will had never learned the one spell that mattered:
How to make someone care enough to save you when the story demanded you die.